


That Fulton Reed Fanfic That Nobody Asked For

by astrapoetica



Category: Daredevil (TV), Mighty Ducks (Movies), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 10:40:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17599751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrapoetica/pseuds/astrapoetica
Summary: After suffering a bad fall on the ice that left him permanently unable to play hockey, Franklin Nelson, once famous as Fulton Reed of the Mighty Ducks Olympic Team, has followed his famous hockey coach into the legal profession as a practicing attorney for Hogarth, Sharpe, and Nelson. Copying his former coach's aggressive style in the court room, he's won case after case, but unfortunately he's also picked up some of his more unfortunate habits like drinking and driving. Luckily, the District Attorney, Matthew Murdock, knows just what he wants him to do to to pay his debt to society: youth mentoring at their local hockey rink. A Daredevil/Mighty Ducks Crossover.





	That Fulton Reed Fanfic That Nobody Asked For

**Author's Note:**

> AU: How different would Foggy's life have been if he had been raised by Rosalind in a universe where he never meets Matt, and where super powers only exist in the realm of comic books and television shows? AKA Give me my adult Mighty Ducks movie, you cowards!
> 
> Also: Matt isn't blind in this universe, and he didn't have a childhood accident with radioactive material. However, there may be future developments of interest to this specific topic, but I honestly don't want to give too much away in this initial chapter. Happy reading!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Franklin Nelson wakes up in jail, and winds up having a very bad day in court.

_Matt_

There's nowhere that he feels more at home than this, gliding across the smooth ice at the crack of dawn, far before anyone else has woken up for their day. It's like the last gasp of quiet left in a noisy world, and District Attorney Matthew Murdock definitely needs all of the extra serenity that he can get in his life. Between the long hours involved in his professional career, and the charity work that he does in his spare time, it isn't often that he gets to be alone with his thoughts. No, for him, silence is a rare and beloved commodity in the middle of a hectic and busy life that's often over scheduled and lacking in space for self reflection. 

But out of all his other obligations, he always tries to make time for this: hitting the ice rink in the morning. It's a lovely way to start off his day, helping calm and center him before everything else begins. He feels like it helps him keep his sanity intact. 

The rink itself is a rinky dink tiny operation that's pretty far beneath the notice of most skating snobs, but Matt loves it. It's owned and operated by a local family, a true mom and pop shop run by a retired marine and his wife. They have two kids, a boy and a girl, both of whom are in grade school now. Really good people, and they let Matt use the rink when no one else has booked it for practice or personal use - a situation that's sadly becoming the norm due to the rapid downturn in the economy. Frank and Maria are probably hoping that having a famous Olympian skating in their rink will help attract more customers, but thus far no one seems interested in following in the foot steps of a washed up figure skater whose best days are definitely far behind him. 

He launches himself into a tight jump, spinning and landing with a crisp, clear sound that would have made his old coach proud. 

Clapping rings out from somewhere behind him, and he neatly turns as he glides by Maria Castle. She's standing on the sidelines on the other side of the glass partition, and has apparently been watching him, although he doesn't know for how long. Her chestnut brown hair falls down around her face in loose, wavy curls, and her dark eyes are dancing with delight as she waves at him. 

He waves back, making it into a dramatic flourish. He loops back around to the exit, stopping neatly on the edge of the blade and kicking up a fine spray of ice. Walking out onto the black spongy mat, he lets Maria pull him into a tight hug. She smells like some sort of floral perfume, sweet and enticing, the exact kind of thought he shouldn't be having about another man's wife. He lets go of her reluctantly, afraid that as soon as he lets go so she'll launch into her latest pet project, the crusade that he likes to call "Force Sad Matt to Hook Up With One of My Hot Girlfriends."  
  
And lo and behold, "Okay, so this time I really have it right!" 

He groans, clutching at his stomach dramatically as he walks over to a bench so that he can sit down and start unlacing his skates. It's not exactly a quick process, and Maria seems bound and determined to exploit every second of his captivity.

"Her name is Natasha, and she's perfect for you!" She ticks off attributes as she starts listing them. "One, she owns her own business, so you know that she's motivated and driven, just like you are. Two, she just got out of a serious relationship a little while ago, just like you did, so you'll have that in common too. Three, she's gorgeous and a red head..." 

"What does that have to with anyth - "

She goes on as if she hasn't heard him. "Four, she's brutally intelligent, so she'll be more than a match for anything you can throw at her. And five, she also loves ice skating, and she's the troop leader for a Brownie group that comes here once a month." Maria clasps her hands together, as if this is all just too much to handle. "I mean, can you imagine how cute that would be? You can bring those little hockey boys that you coach for, she can bring her brownie girls..."

"And we can all just skate off together into the 1950's sunset?" Matt mutters under his breath.

"It would be picture perfect, Matt! Can't you see it?"

Her eyes are so full of hope that he hates to put an end to her dreams, but he also doesn't want to hurt this unknown woman by pretending that he's interested in anything more than a casual hook up or two. It sounds like she would be after something serious, and after the relationship he just got out of... He shakes his head sadly, both of his boots unlaced now. He wriggles his toes, glad to be out of the tight confines of his skates. He left his shoes beneath the bench, and he starts pulling them on after changing out his thick socks for skinnier ones. "You know what I'm going to say, Maria."

"And you know that I'm going to keep asking, so you should give in and just agree to meet this girl already! Come on, casual coffee, an afternoon somewhere, two hours of a time commitment tops. What can that hurt?"

_Plenty. Especially if she discovers the real reason why Dex left me..._

"I'm just not ready, okay? I wish you would stop asking."   
  
Her smile slides off her face then, and she fixes him with a serious expression. "No one deserves to be happy more than you, you know? After everything you've been through this past year, with that man you were seeing, I mean I knew there was something off about him the moment I met him! And Frank thought so too, you know..."

_Yeah, because hindsight is 20/20, and everyone is a critic when a relationship doesn't magically grow into a white wedding. And she wonders why I'm not ready to move on?_

"I have to get going, Maria," he says, hoisting his duffel bag onto his shoulder. 

She narrows her eyes at him in a way that lets him know that this topic definitely hasn't been dropped, just shelved for a later opportunity. More than likely he'll walk into the rink one morning soon, and there Miss Perfect will be, waiting for him on the ice with a blush and a smile. So perfectly cute and suitable for him. Only she won't be, because he isn't ready to move on yet. Why won't anyone listen to him about it?

"Alright, I'll see you around," she replies. "You bringing those boys by Saturday afternoon?"

He's already walking away after a quick glance at his watch reveals that he's already running twenty minutes late. "You know me, regular as clockwork. Saturday hockey practice next week, Saturday hockey practice two weeks from now, Saturday hockey practice for life!"

He pumps his fist in the air, and Maria's laughter rings out from behind him. He can only hope that by the time the weekend rolls around again that she's entirely forgotten this nonsense about hooking him up on yet another disastrous blind date. Then again, knowing how stubborn Maria, he might as well wish that he could walk on water.

\---  

_Franklin_

_Wham!_

There's a loud metallic bang, and Franklin wakes with a start. He's disoriented momentarily as he rubs the side of his throbbing head, wondering where in the hell he could...

Be.

_Oh. That's right, you idiot, you're in jail._

Memories from the previous night assault him, shot after shot of scotch that he shouldn't have taken. Getting in his car, the rain drumming the roof of it like thunder, the flash of the lights of a cop car. His own sassy mouth getting him in trouble, the feel of the zip ties they had used to hold his hands behind his back before they hauled him in the back of a car...

Now he's left staring at the bars of a jail cell, rolling himself out of the hard metal bed that he was sleeping on so that he can get to his feet and survey his surroundings. There's another bed in this room, but it's empty, and he seems to be mostly alone. He can hear other voices talking, and some yelling, and when he presses his face against the bars he can see a long hallway leading to a closed door. He sighs and sits back down on the edge of the bed again, nearly vomiting from the sharp stench of urine and body odor that feels like it's surrounding him. On top of it all, his body is aching like he just got body slammed by a seven foot goon.

_Ugh._

He curves his back and straightens it again, raises his hands above his head and locks them, stretching. He hopes to sort out some of the kinks in his back, but he winds up failing miserably. He gives up on his quest to make his muscles feel any better, and decides to use the urinal, holding his breath so that the smell of it doesn't make him puke. That's pretty much the last thing he needs at this juncture, to be puking his guts up when someone finally comes to talk to him...

"Nelson?"

He finishes up what he's doing, zipping up his fly. He squints against the light and the pounding in his head as he tries to focus on the blurry form standing just on the other side of the bars. 

"Yeah, that's me." 

"Thought your name was Reed, wasn't it? When they brought you in, I saw your face and recognized you from tv. The Olympics you know? You played back in the 90's didn't you? For that team, what was the name of it again, I can't remember..."

_Oh God, there's nothing worse than an old fan._

"The Mighty Ducks." 

_And that was a lifetime ago._

"That's it!" The man leans on the bars, peering in at him. "You're that Fulton Reed guy, aren't you? From the bash brothers?"

 _Hard to be a bash brother when there's just one of you left._ But there's no way that he wants to go into all of that with this guy, so he just keeps it short and sweet. 

"Used to be."  _How long is he going to keep tormenting me like this, anyway?_ "Changed my name awhile ago though. Franklin Nelson, Attorney at Law." He puts his hand through the bars as if they're about to shake hands in a court room. But the man just narrows his eyes at him, and he retracts his hand slowly. "Gonna let me out of here, or is this some sort of showdown? Should I have Annie get my gun, and we can meet at high noon and face off?" 

The guard looks back door at a clipboard that he's carrying, and he makes a mark on it with his pen as if he's checking something off. "So Franklin  _Percy_ Nelson," he sneers the Percy part as if it disgusts him, "prior alias Fulton Reed. You're being charged with driving under the influence, driving recklessly in poor weather conditions..."

"Poor weather conditions, it was a little rain!"

"Disobeying instructions given by an officer of the law..."

"Is that illegal these days?"

"Resisting arrest, and a few other charges, just thrown in for fun." The guard gives him a glare that is pure schadenfreude. "Used to think you were hot shit,  _Fulton Reed._ Now who's laughing, huh?"

Resting his head against the bars, Franklin resists the urge to reach through the bars, grab the guy by his overly pressed shirt collar, and slam him up against the bars. "I would prefer it if you would just call me Franklin, because that's my legal name in the state of New York. And please just do your job. You must have something to say, or else you wouldn't be here. Can you just get it over with so that we can both move on, and can I get some Advil and a bottled water for this godawful headache that I have? I mean, you can do that, can't you? You're not just there for decoration, you can actually do something that requires moving your legs and using your brain at the same time?"

The guard raps the clipboard against the bars, making him jump back from where he was gripping them. "You've made bail, asshole, that's what I'm here to say. Also your court date is in three days. Don't miss it, or we'll issue a warrant for your arrest. Only reason you're actually getting out of here today is because some high and mighty muckety muck came by here this morning from your legal firm to talk to the judge seeing to your case, and she convinced him that you weren't a flight risk." He snicks his teeth in a tsk-tsk sound. "Gotta love all that corrupt favoritism bullshit. Gets shit shows like you all sorts of special treatment. Fulton Reed, can't believe I met you like this..." 

He unlocks the door, shaking his head and glaring at him contemptuously as if he's personally let all of America down with his poor behavior. That idiot has nothing on the kind of looks Coach Bombay used to give him though, so he just lets it roll off of him like water. 

Goody-two-shoes Charlie Conway is waiting for him in the discharging area. Figures he would show up. He's one of his only friends living in New York, most of the other Ducks are still back in Minnesota. He must have heard about it from someone who saw him get pulled over, or maybe the police went through his phone and just dialed someone from his pitifully short list of saved contacts. Because he's not the person he used his one phone call on, that honor was reserved for Rosalind, and only because of her legal pull in the city. But it's his life, and therefore everything is a crap shoot. So naturally it's not his mother who came to bail him out, but somebody who's actually going to try to force him to talk about his feelings and why he's managed to land himself inside of a jail cell yet again. 

Sure enough, when they get outside, Conway is all "What happened?" And "What are you even doing with your life anyway, Fulton? You're throwing it all away. What's going on with you these days?" 

He doesn't even try to correct him, and ask him to call him Franklin. That ship sailed years ago, and now he's stuck being called all kinds of different things by all kinds of different people - apparently even an "asshole" and a "disappointment" by prison guards. 

"Look, Charlie, I'm trying, okay? It was just an honest mistake. I'll call you next time I've had too much to drink, or I'll take an Uber. The judge is basically in the pocket of my firm, so I'm sure they can get him to drop the charges. No harm, no foul. So don't worry it. Thanks for the bail though, I appreciate it, man." 

The lies and smooth talk drip out of his mouth in ready succession, his canned speech that he gives Charlie every single time this kind of thing happens. He can tell by the frown on Charlie's face, his perfect blue eyes dubious, his button nose scrunched up, that he doesn't buy it for a second. But he's got a busy life now. Between playing for the Rangers and his new wife with a baby already on the way he just doesn't have time for all of this anymore, so he simply hugs him and makes him reassert all of his promises before scampering off down the street. 

Franklin watches him go, sighing as he pages through the rap sheet currently facing him. All he can do is pray that the judge doesn't try to screw him.

\---

_ Franklin _

But of course, when the appointed day and time does come, somehow the judge seems to have changed his mind about his promise to Rosalind to go easy on her youngest junior partner. It probably has something to do with the smarmy, self righteous asshole of a DA, who leans over towards the Judge Robinson to have a "private conference with him." And there Franklin is, standing like a freaking idiot as the bailiff, the court reporter, the judicial assistant, and just everybody else in there watch his life go down the toilet. They're all probably just having a good laugh at his misfortune. Just like that guard was. Because as much as people may claim to love an American icon, they love to watch one get torn down even more.

As the DA and the judge "talk it over," Judge Robinson's half balding tufts of white hair nod along in agreement with whatever-the-hell nonsense Murdock is selling today. And sure, has Franklin made it difficult for the DA to do his job once or twice? Of course he has. But he has to win court cases, because that's his job. It's what he's paid to do (and quite handsomely he might add). And maybe if he wants to win, Murdock should figure out that it takes more than just some sob story about old people being forced out of their apartments to come out on top in a court trial. Poor people crying does automatically equal a victory, and the innocent don't always find justice, just as the guilty don't always wind up in prison. He was kind of hoping that logic might apply to him today, but it looks like his luck has finally run out.

It would honestly help him keep his shit together if Murdock wasn't so damn handsome on top of it all, because that part of it just isn't fair. By all rights, the DA should be ugly, full of warts and wearing horn rimmed glasses. But no, he's handsome as sin with his dark hair and his perfectly toned body. And unfortunately Franklin often finds himself drifting off whenever he has to face off against the DA, overcome with thoughts of what he'd like to do with him or maybe do  _to him_ if they were ever alone in a dark room together. That's unlikely to happen though, given that he's such a thorn in his side. Always there to try to help the little man, a total self sacrificing martyr, who just can't let anything go. 

It's a goddamn waste, is what it is.

"Mr. Nelson."   
  
Judge Robinson's deep voice is cool and collected, but clearly unamused at seeing him back here again. He gives Franklin a stern look, his gray eyes serious behind his half-rim glasses. "Mr. Nelson, I am truly dismayed that we must continue to meet this way. I prefer to see counselors trying cases, not landing behind bars themselves. And these are serious charges, that unfortunately due to their repetition, I cannot afford to take lightly any longer. No matter what your law firm - or your mother - might claim about mitigating circumstances."

He's nearly biting his own tongue off trying to hold back a smart retort. And Murdock, that utter asshole, is smirking at him like it's Christmas morning, and they're getting ready to unwrap presents.

"Your Honor, if I might - "

"You may not, Mr. Nelson. Now I've already spoken to the DA, and he's kindly agreed to drop the charges against you if you agree to specific terms."

_I can guess exactly who those terms favor..._

"And what might those be, Your Honor?"

"Community service, a whole lot of it. In an arena suited to your specific skills." 

_Oh no, oh God no. This seriously couldn't be happening to him. He feels dizzy and sick to his stomach, like the world is closing in on him._

He can't help it, the words just fall straight out of his mouth: "As a legal counselor?"

Judge Robinson just smiles at him and leans back in his chair, his face smug and self satisfied. "As a youth mentor to a local hockey team. St. Agnes's team, actually. A very worthy cause, Mr. Nelson, as I'm sure you'll see in your 300 hours of service."

"Are you..." He's flabbergasted. 300 hours over something as trivial as... "Your Honor, there has to be some mistake, I'm not sure how I could even keep working if - "

"You'll do it, and you'll do it with a smile, Mr. Nelson. That is, if you want to keep from having your license to practice law revoked." He raises one caterpillar-esque white eyebrow at Franklin, who swallows with a sense of growing trepidation. "You do want to continue being an attorney in New York City, don't you?"

_Is this how Coach Bombay felt when this happened to him? No wonder he was such an asshole to us all at first._

"Judge Robinson, you must be aware of why I retired from hockey in the first place. I have a serious injury that prevents me from - "

"He said youth mentor," Murdock interrupts, and he wants nothing more than to punch that smarmy bastard's lights out as he just leans calmly against the front of the judge's bench, totally ignoring any sense of proper etiquette. "Not skating coach. So your disability shouldn't be a problem." 

"It's not a disa - " He turns away and cuts himself off in mid-sentence to appeal to the judge again. "Your Honor, you can't seriously be considering this. Murdock has a vested interest in the St. Agnes hockey team, it's well known that he coaches them in his spare time. I can't believe you would let personal sentiment run rampant in your court room."

"I don't think you're the right person to lecture me about personal sentiment, son." He leans forward, his eyes locked on Franklin's. "Do your community service, Mr. Nelson. And don't let me catch you with your pants down again, or else there won't be anyone, not even Mr. Murdock here, who'll be able to rescue you from the consequences of your poor actions." 

His eyes cut over to Murdock to see if the man is reveling in his victory, but he's already on his way to collect his paperwork and jacket from the counselor's table. He resents the implication that the other man somehow 'rescued' him, but there's no time to even protest. The judge gives him a piece of paper telling him when and where the hockey team practices, with strict instructions to be there the following Saturday afternoon no later than 2 p.m. He doesn't specify if he should bring skates or not, and he isn't even sure if he still knows where his are. But he supposes he'll have to be there, or have his license taken away.

And then it's all over, a new case being called before he even has time to exit the court room. And all he can think to himself is  _Fuck, I need a drink._

 


End file.
